g2 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING 
habits not unlike that species, except so far as these 
habits are modified by its different surroundings. 
Like many gallinaceous birds, Gambel’s quail is very 
social in habit, and at the proper season they get to- 
gether in great flocks, and when alarmed and driven 
to wing may get up all about one, only to disappear 
almost at once among the thick cover or in the distance. 
Dr. Coues, in his article on this species published in 
“The Birds of the Northwest,” designates the valleys 
of the Gila and Colorado as its centers of abundance. 
This article is well worth quoting in part, as painting 
charming pictures of a region little known to most 
sportsmen, but one of extreme interest. 
He says: “An interesting fact in the distribution 
of this species is the effect of the Colorado desert in 
shutting it off from the fertile portions of California. 
This dreary, sterile waste offers a barrier to its west- 
ward extension that is only exceptionally overcome. 
Although the birds enter the desert a little way, they 
rarely reach far enough to mix with the representative 
species of California (L. californicus). The strip of 
country that mostly assists in their occasional passage 
westward is along the Mojave River, a stream rising in 
the San Bernardino Mountains, and flowing eastward 
toward the Colorado, from which it is shut off by a 
range of hills, and consequently sinks in the desert at 
Soda Lake. Among other birds, the two kinds of 
plumed quail—Gambel’s and the California—meet 
along this comparatively fertile thoroughfare upon neu- 
tral ground, as Drs. Heermann and Cooper, as well as 
